


Light and the Dark

by mslucyirene



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-21 11:12:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9546344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mslucyirene/pseuds/mslucyirene
Summary: Granny meets Yoda on her way to meet Death. It does not go well for Yoda.





	

“Yoda I am.”

  
Granny walked out to the forest, this last borrowing of You’s body coming to an end. She would go on her own terms. The appearance of a stranger on the path was not part of those terms. She stopped, and sat on her haunches, head cocked.

“Granny Weatherwax if you please.” You’s eyes and nose provided more information than was strictly necessary but whatever this thing was, it wasn’t human and it wasn’t elf. “And you are??”

“Many things. Do not fear, child. Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

Granny does not make a face (not that she really could, You’s body was designed to make an ear pattern, or a tail swipe, not a face). This…creature carries a staff and it is not terribly wise to anger men with weapons, and for all the persykology he uses, it is rather obvious he is a he. No woman thinks of fear as anything but a handy sign that the shortcut down an alley late at night is a poor choice for a girl keen on living soundly.

“You must unlearn what you have learned.” He continued. Granny gave in, and raised one eyebrow, You had learnt the trick of that at least.

“So’s that I learn what you’re teachin’, is that it?”

The green thing, Yoda, nods and a grin widens and his arms spread too, like she’s smart for following his train of thought.

“Old I am, have seen many turn to the Dark.”

This Granny can get a hold of, and she nods. The Dark does lurk there, in the background. All it takes is seeing people as things. She can respect this unlearning too, what else do you call the apprenticeships? She suspects this Yoda doesn’t mean doing the rounds and clipping toenails and catching babies and washing the dead though, and unlearning the glamour. She nods anyway, wondering what Gytha would be saying if she were here. Something crude no doubt.

“A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. His mind on where he was. What he was doing. Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things.”

“Young men do. And young women for that matter.” Granny finally interjects. Her voice comes from You, but not directly.

“Unlearned those must be, to become a Jedi.”

“So you’re a Jedi then?” The word is odd, and wrong in her not-mouth. Not the way fairy words are, or wizard words, or even persykology. It’s not even the wrong of iron in the fairy mound and the endless mirror selves. It’s something strange and unkind. Even You’s hackles rise, her tail fluffed and claws pricking the dirt.

“Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.”

Yoda looks at her expectantly and she knows, with the part that stays Granny Weatherwax when she borrows, that he’s never been there as the crude matter bleeds itself out into the ground because a lu-min-us being is unmade in the womb. The crude matter lives on, dark and light together. There’s a gathering feeling like thunder, and it isn’t the dangerous gods she knows here on the Disc but something else altogether. So she chooses her words carefully.

“You’re small, that’s no lie, but I’ve seen littler than you wreak havoc.” Not just those not-lives bled out onto well-worn cotton rags and dirt, but Casanunda, Greebo, and the Nac Mac Feegles, they would all laugh at the idea you needed magic to compensate for being small. The part of You that is sleeping under Granny’s self laughs too, a cat-laugh, a silent gasping hiss. “What are you here for though?”

“There is one I sense. Powerful, he is.”

“And you’ll be wanting to train him then.”

Yoda nods, ponderous. Granny knows this was the danger of Geoffrey. Not the same danger Esk was, but Geoffrey brought this wrongness from far away to steal him. Unlearn him and after that, probably others.

“Anger I sense. Suffering to come.” Yoda nods wisely at his own proclamation.

“Suffering always is.” Granny snaps back. The creature peering into her feelings is unhelpful. She shrugs, trusting in herself. “Our lad is happy here and I’ll be thanking you to not be taking him.”

“Choose he must. Candle or the night, the younglings with the Force must choose between the two.”

“Is it always night where you are from then? Candles don’t do much good in the day, wax isn’t free you know.”

There is a pause. “Dark places, even in daylight.”

Granny nods. “Oh yes, but I shouldn’t think to keep a candle lit in the basement for fear of the dark.” The noise she makes is pure disapproval of the concept. It is the scoff that all other scoffs, guffaw, snorts, and laughs try to imitate. The thing’s body language is hard to read, between the cat-body telling her that clearly it was a kind of food, and the over-sized cloak dragging on the ground, but Yoda’s grip on his staff changed and Granny took that as a point for her own.

“Fear it is not. Preparedness, it is.”

“Don’t be burning a candle you may need later.”

“Become the candle, not burn one!”

You’s head tilted, and Granny would have rolled her eyes except cats don’t work that way. “Become a candle that doesn’t burn? What use is that then.”

She took double points for the way Yoda’s grip shifted again, and he fussed with his cloak. Obviously not a man to do his own laundry either, with the way he let it drag through the mud.

“The choice is for the youngling, not for you.” There’s a hint of a huff there, and Granny counts another point. It is pure cat-body reflex to clean a paw in response; nothing like a cat for showing disdain.

“Young Geoffrey made his own choices, lots of times.” Is what she finally replies, once her paw is clean. Of course Tif…Mistress Aching had helped with that, and Granny knew exactly why this Yoda was coming for the young man and not the girl-child. “He’ll likely choose again too. That’s what bein’ a witch is, makin’ choices for thems who can’t and thems who won’t.”

In the pause she can hear the old lessons too, from the mirror days. Not just choosing for others, no, some had to choose each day to do the right and the good, not the easy. Not the dark. Not the simple choices. This Yoda looks like he might understand that, but isn’t likely to be sharing it with the younglings.

Might interfere with the unlearning.

“Choose for him, will you?”

Granny Weatherwax laughs. “Young Geoffrey is capable of making his own choices. He’s a fine witch in training, with young Mistress Aching there to guide him.”

It’s complicated, all this cat-body business talking to a strange frog man, but she manages to make clear that young Mistress Aching is of Granny Weatherwax’s line, and that they’ve all had a hand in the young man’s training.

“So. To the darkside he has gone then.” Yoda’s head shakes. “Without training, anger, fear, hatred, suffering. Doomed, the boy is.”

Granny lets the cat-body react to that, a sudden low yowling and You is twice the size she was before. Yoda steps back from the display. “No. Not the dark, he chose witching. Witching is the light and the dark together because that’s what people is, dark and light.”

“People, it could be. Jedi, cannot be.”

“Geoffrey is not a jedi, he is a witch.” That still feels odd to say, but if the alternative was the poor lad being a beacon of light, she’d say it till the hill echoed with it. “He’s a people too. Just with more responsibilities than most.”

“Much relies on younglings learning the ways of the Force. Universe is big, bigger than this.” With a gnarled hand Yoda takes in the forest and the valleys and the mountains, dismissing them. Granny snarls, she doesn’t have time for this, she has an appointment with one who will not wait .

“So’s you won’t let him choose then?”

Another huff. “Always choices.”

“He chose, he is a witch. He does not need the Force.”

When Yoda uses the Force to push her aside, it is an odd experience. A shove, air and self. All it accomplishes is pushing her from You into the world, ghostlike. You shakes herself delicately, then resumes her pose in the middle of the path. Released from the cat-body Granny can sense the desperation behind Yoda’s pose, but also that Geoffrey is not too far away, tracking down the wayward cat.

“Power, you lack.” Yoda says. Granny looks at him with pity now. Small scared little thing he is, adrift. These are her hills, her kind, her kin. You yowls, Yoda turns, and Granny breathes in.

“Power is what I am now, all that I am.” Death is standing beside the path, patiently waiting out the rest of the conversation. “These are my hills Yoda, have you forgotten the power of your own dirt beneath your feet?”

Not that Granny would ever admit it, but young Tiffany had a much stronger connection with her Chalk than Granny had with Lancre, but it was enough. The ground beneath Yoda’s feet did not tremble, nothing so subtle. Instead all the plants around him buried their spring heads beneath the ground like winter had come.

“Kill the plants to show me power? Surprise, it is not.” Yoda poses with his staff and Granny laughs.

“The plants aren’t dead y’daft bugger. Haven’t you ever known autumn? Winter?” Granny’s arms spread and the woods sparkle with more than motes of dust. “Geoffrey’s place is here, his power is in the cycles and the balance of dark and light, summer and winter. Nothing lives without both.”

The flowers bloom and Geoffrey steps forth. Yoda goes to speak with him and Granny turns away. Either she and Tiffany had done their jobs or they hadn’t. Without the limits of the body she knows know what it is that Yoda heralds and it’s a war beyond their disc, beyond the elephants and the turtle. That is what he would bring here, what he would take young Geoffrey towards.

It isn’t just pride in Geoffrey when he laughs in Yoda’s face and shakes his head. It’s pride in her own self too; keeping headology going even when she wasn’t there was worth the price. Geoffrey picks up You, and bids Yoda goodbye before walking back to town. She can read the nerves in the boy’s spine but he does it well. Once he has gone though, Yoda’s shoulders fall.

“Over, it is.”

“Cheer up.” Yoda startles and Granny laughs, not unkindly. “Stop thinkin’ like we’re books and clay and all that nonsense. We’re people, like thems we do work for. We learn and unlearn just like them. We’re just…better at it.”

With that she nods to Death, politely. “My thanks for waiting.”

“MY PLEASURE MISTRESS WEATHERWAX.” The skeleton intones. “DEALING WITH WITCHES IS ALWAYS INTERESTING.”

As she leaves, striding beside Death, Yoda lets out a sigh and touches the comlink to call the shuttle down.

**Author's Note:**

> (Inspired by this tumblr convo - http://two-bitoutlaw.tumblr.com/post/152011850384/granny-weatherwax-vs-yoda )


End file.
